So if you ever wanted to get a geeky shirt I designed for shirt.woot, now's your chance. I wanted to call it Critical Mass, because I thought that would be cool and work on a few geeky levels, but I think that idea fell through a hole in the 'tubes. I chose a d6 instead of a d10 because I thou...

How We Roll
ongoing sale: 8110 (live in 11h 58m)
Current numbers (updated each minute)
First sucker: MischievousGrin
Speed to first woot: 0m 4.827s
Last wooter to woot: Mordian7th
Last purchase time: Thursday, February 19, 2009, 9:01:36 AM Central Time
Order pace: 0m 10.835s
Woots sold: 2999
Direct from the Shirt.Woot page for this shirt.
Midnight I will be up and ready.

So if you ever wanted to get a geeky shirt I designed for shirt.woot, now's your chance. I wanted to call it Critical Mass, because I thought that would be cool and work on a few geeky levels, but I think that idea fell through a hole in the 'tubes. I chose a d6 instead of a d10 because I thou...

So if you ever wanted to get a geeky shirt I designed for shirt.woot, now's your chance. I wanted to call it Critical Mass, because I thought that would be cool and work on a few geeky levels, but I think that idea fell through a hole in the 'tubes. I chose a d6 instead of a d10 because I thou...

I have a sizeable number of the old 0-9x2 dice and won't be willingly parting with them. Getting new ones to match new die color schemes, though, is next to impossible.
I love tiny tiny dice. I bought a couple fistfuls of them when they appeared in my friend's gaming store. Less than completely practical for regular gaming usage but a LOT quieter when playing BOD (Buckets O' Dice) games.
I did find a special use for them when playing large-scale BattleTech games, though. The games take so long to play, especially when doing larger than Company-on-Company sized battles. The most common interruption in the game was "Has THIS 'Mech moved?"; the second most common interruption was "How far did THIS 'Mech move?"; third was "Did THIS 'Mech jump?". Nobody could get anything done while everyone sorted out their options matrices.
Tiny tiny d6 dice to the rescue. After the 'Mech moved, we'd place the die in front of the 'Mech miniature (which indicated it had already moved) and set the die equal to its movement defense bonus, including the jump bonus. Since the highest movement defense bonus including jump is 5, a 6 meant zero bonus.
It sped up monster games of BattleTech noticeably -- often cutting the game length in half.
After the combat round, everyone picked up their dice and the game sped onward.

I just remembered this moment form Orccon on Monday that I thought was amusing enough to put in its own entry. On the way down to the con, Nolan told me that he really wanted to buy some of his own dice to go with the dice I'd already given him. "I want a huge bag of dice, like the one you have....

I purchased one of the golf-ball-like d100s back when they came out, just for the novelty of it. They're very impractical; they never stop rolling. Or maybe I'm just a spaz.
There was another type of d100, looked like a die inside a clear plastic ball or somesuch, I didn't get one of those. I think there might have been a bead inside that settled onto the number you rolled. Didn't appeal to me much.
I preferred the old 20-sided numbered 0-9 twice for my percentiles, though. You can't hardly find them anymore; everyone seems to prefer the Susan B. Anthony dice (easily confused with 8-siders if you're in a hurry and it's dark).
Ah, well. If it mattered enough to me, I'd create a company which manufactured them and then I could make them how I wanted.
But the key point at the end of your story is absolutely true: Noone needs the d100, since a pair of d10s or psuedo-d20s is sufficient to the cause, and generally more practical.
But then, I didn't need the monster nerf foam dice sets I purchased either, but they're good for a giggle about once every year or so...

I just remembered this moment form Orccon on Monday that I thought was amusing enough to put in its own entry. On the way down to the con, Nolan told me that he really wanted to buy some of his own dice to go with the dice I'd already given him. "I want a huge bag of dice, like the one you have....

Excellent rundown. And yet another repeat of the best wisdom in Life in general, but specifically on the Internet: You do your thing. I do my thing. If our things intersect, let's hope it's fun.
- Steve M.

Yesterday, my friend Alan tweeted a link to this story of how Twitter was born. If you use Twitter at all, you should totally check it out because it's awesome. If you don't use Twitter, you should totally check it out, because a lot of what you may have heard about Twitter is probably filtered ...

I remember when the rules were just articles in Chainmail, and the endless Tolkein-vs-playability fights. Still have a photocopy of the first collective ruleset assembled from those articles.
I always liked the Lizardmen; they figured predominantly in the first adventure I corralled each new group of players into in my campaign. After that they were on their own to decide where to go.
For complexity, Rolemaster intensely detailed. For simplicity, I tend to not go any further than AD&D v1.0.
Been a VERY long time since I played Basic D&D though.
:: sigh ::
Thanks for the prod toward a trip down memory lane.

"This is a game that is fun. It helps you imagine." -Preface to the D&D Basic Rules Set, 1983 I'm following the "blog less while you're writing stories" rule, so I can stay on target and get this novella finished before Duke Nukem Forever ships. So, very briefly: Playing a tiny bit of D&D 4e at...

I remember when the rules were just articles in Chainmail, and the endless Tolkein-vs-playability fights. Still have a photocopy of the first collective ruleset assembled from those articles.
I always liked the Lizardmen; they figured predominantly in the first adventure I corralled each new group of players into in my campaign. After that they were on their own to decide where to go.
For complexity, Rolemaster intensely detailed. For simplicity, I tend to not go any further than AD&D v1.0.
Been a VERY long time since I played Basic D&D though.
:: sigh ::
Thanks for the prod toward a trip down memory lane.

"This is a game that is fun. It helps you imagine." -Preface to the D&D Basic Rules Set, 1983 I'm following the "blog less while you're writing stories" rule, so I can stay on target and get this novella finished before Duke Nukem Forever ships. So, very briefly: Playing a tiny bit of D&D 4e at...